Chivas The Venture | success comes with AimfortheMoon
It’s time for an update on this years edition of Chivas The Venture – the global search and million dollar fund for the worlds most impactful social enterprises. This year, for the first time since the global launch of the initiative in 2014, The Netherlands can proudly be named one of the in total 32 participating countries around the globe this year.
And boy, what a promising and inspiring start have we had so far! A truly spectacular amount of you showed interest in our cause, reached out to us and helped spread the word within the vibrant Dutch social entrepreneurial ecosystem. And because of your efforts and support, The Venture straight away landed successfully in The Netherlands in its first year!
In little over a month, a truly impressive 130+ Dutch social enterprises, active in a massive variety of industries and countries and addressing all types of societal challenges, signed up aiming to gain more well deserved recognition for their individual cause and moonshots. The interest has far exceeded our already ambitious expectations of Dutch entries, and at the same time only acknowledges once again the importance and legitimacy for all competitions like ours.
Now that all applicants were in, a truly competitive bunch, it was time to rank them based on problem, solution, scalability and (future) impact, to name a few. This tough proces required for a sincere and careful judgement, which let us to reach out to seasoned and skilled individuals within the social entrepreneurial scene. Proudly, we configured a jury consisting of Willemijn Verloop (founder Social Enterprise NL), prof. dr. Harry Hummels (1st Dutch chair of Social Entrepreneurship, Utrecht University), Marcello Palazzi (founder B Corp Europe) and Denis Fiévet (CEO Pernod Ricard NL/BE). In close collaboration with Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (Oxford, UK), our jury of experts carefully selected this years top 5 finalists.
During another sold-out Moonshots event in Amsterdam Wednesday evening, we announced this years Dutch finalists and their road to our local ‘Grand Final’ January 12th 2017 to the public and press (De Telegraaf). In alphabetical order:
Now, having announced our top 5, it is time to start this years local endgame. In the coming two weeks, our finalists and their companies will be interviewed and shot on film as part of all of us getting to know them better personally and professionally, as well as preparing them for a local voting phase which commenced mid-December. All vote for your favorite entrepreneur in their road towards the local final.
Support your favorite finalist!
Until January 12th 2017, you can view the video portraits of our finalists on our Facebook-page. A compilation video of the finalists can be found here. Individual portraits can be found here.
